Sunday night, the L.A. Times' 2013 Hero Complex Film Festival closed with a celebratory tribute to "The X-Files," in its 20th-anniversary year. Episodes were shown and "Hero Complex" editor Gina McIntyreinterviewed creator Chris Carter, along with Darin Morgan, who wrote for and acted in the show, and his writer-producer brother Glen Morgan.

In celebration of this celebration, I wrote an essay, posted Sunday in Hero Complex, on the influential paranormal procedural, its look, its people, and my own preference, as a viewer, for fuzziness over certainty. Excerpts:

On the series' aesthetic: "Even more than 'Twin Peaks,' 'The X-Files' explored mood as content. Though it was born in the age of the 4:3 aspect ratio and (comparatively) low-resolution image, there was from the beginning an intentional, emotional, painterly use of color and shape and a choreographic approach to light. You can watch the show with the sound down and still feel what you are meant to feel."

On the pairing of David Duchovny (as Fox Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (as Dana Scully): "Both Duchovny and Anderson had a softness, even a sleepiness, superficially at odds with their roles as FBI agents and action heroes. They were not dry and deadpan, exactly (though they were, through the years, increasingly droll). Theirs was a kind of restrained sensuality, a narcotic eroticism. Scully and Mulder, Mulder and Scully — pivoting on that central ul, you can begin with one name and end with the other: Mully. Sculder. They are two sides of the same coin, interlocking yin and yang, one unthinkable without the other."